In the first years of YouTube from 2005-2010 it was much easier to get subscribers than it is today. Now it is extremely difficult because competition in most niches is extreme and YouTube doesn’t do anything to help. And I really mean it! They do NOTHING for new channels.

The policy of YouTube is YOU have to prove you can get viewers – which normally takes years and when you reach a certain limit YouTube will start helping you. Small channels don’t get any tailwind. It is reserved for the big channels which makes money (for YouTube).

I manage a bunch of YouTube channels and it is very clear that channels with few subscribers struggle a lot to get views and for huge channels traffic is pretty much on auto pilot! The views we get on YouTube is DIRECTLY connected to how many subscribers you have. And unfortunately the number of subscribers is DIRECTLY connected to how many views you get.

There is a deadlock that many YouTube Channels experience:

You need Views to get Subscribers – but you need Subscribers to get Views! This makes it virtually impossible for 98% of all YouTube channels.

The number of subscribers on YouTube is VERY determining in how many views you get. This is NOT the case with Pinterest.

But what is it with YouTube Shorts?

Recently we got Shorts. A new type of video that was supposed to steal viewers from TikTok because the short format appeared to be extremely popular. Almost everybody suffers from some kind of attention disorder or attention deficit and the result is that we get bored if nothing new happens every seven seconds. Or rather – we get afraid of the silence we might experience.

These videos kind of broke the deadlock formula described above.

I created my first short on Aug. 11, 2022, and during the next 4 and a half months I created 43 shorts which combined gave me 127 new subscribers and tripled my views! Even on a new channel with only 10 subscribers, I managed to get more but the smaller the channel is the harder it is, but there is only one way. FORWARD!

The more subscribers you get the easier it will become!

 This is a screenshot of one of my best shorts. It gave me 17 subscribers in 12 hours!

How To Get More Subscribers On YouTube Shorts.

The advantage of Shorts is YouTube put your video on a show list. Usually right away but I have seen videos that did not take off until the day after but it is not the rule. Your video will be placed on this list only once but it will stay there and fall in rankings for the next 24 hours and then it is usually gone. I have only seen a very few times where a video suddenly gets a revival as if it was placed on the list again. I think (but don’t know for sure) that I edited the text or the title when that happened.

If your channel is new or you only have a few subscribers your reach will be very low. If you have a big channel with a lot of subscribers you will get a lot of new followers on your shorts.

So when YouTube say they don’t favor channels I think it is not quite true. The fact that small channels only get a few subscribers on their videos reveals that big channels ARE favored! 

The bigger your channel are the easier it is to get more subscribers. It is the core of their algorithm because they are convinced they make more money on big channels.

This is also the reason why you need 4000 watch hours to be eligible to apply for being part of their ads program. Small channels are NOT interesting for YouTube.

One of the great things are you can take a piece of another video and remake it into a short. Try to create a few shorts and you will find it only needs to take 5-10 minutes to create it.

If you are using DaVinci here is how you set it up for shorts:

Start DaVInci and Create a New Project.

Then Right Click on the Media Pool, Create New Time Line and give it a name.

Remove Use Project Settings Check Mark in the lower left corner first.

Next click on Format.

Check Use Vertical Resolution and you will see the resolution changes from horizontal format to vertical format. Then click Create.

Now you can drag your new timeline to your video track in your Track Editor (The third icon in the very bottom of DaVinci. There are seven icons ending with a Rocket)

If you are serious about getting subscribers and views to your YouTube channel, shorts will really help you. And it is FREE!

This is how to get more subscribers on YouTube! This is how you break the dead lock!